Stallman wins $240,000 in MacArthur award

By Reuven M. Lerner

Richard M. Stallman, president of the League for Programming Freedom
and a former employee of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has been
awarded a $240,000 fellowship by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation.

Although he has severed all official ties with MIT, Stallman still works
in offices at the AI lab. He describes himself as a "squatter" on the MIT
campus.

Stallman is best known at MIT for having written the Emacs word
processor, but he is also gaining prominence as an outspoken critic of
software patents and copyrights on user interfaces. He founded the LPF
about one year ago as a "grass-roots political organization, to fight for
the freedom of programmers to implement what the users want."

The LPF is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to warn the public
about encroaching monopolies in the software industry, and to develop
countermeasures against them, according to the LPF's corporate charter. The
LPF's major activities at present involve lobbying against Lotus
Development Corp., developers of 1-2-3, and Apple Computer Inc., because of
the user-interface copyright infringement lawsuits they have filed against
their competitors.

The MacArthur fellowships, known as "genius grants," are awarded annually
to exceptionally talented and creative people. This year's recipients
include artists, human rights activists, mathematicians, and astronomers.

Prizes range from $150,000 to $375,000 in value, and include health
insurance for the recipient. The grants have no strings attached and are
disbursed over a five year period.

Lotus decision may

spur activism

Stallman's activities concerning copyrights on software user interfaces
will probably increase, in light of recent court decisions. Last month,
Lotus Development Corporation won a suit for copyright infringement against
Paperback Software. Paperback had marketed a program that mimicked the
"look and feel" of 1-2-3, Lotus' best-selling spreadsheet.

Software development will become increasingly difficult, Stallman said,
if companies continue to enforce copyrights on the look and feel of their
user interfaces. He often cites steering wheels and typewriter keyboards as
examples of interfaces that succeeded only because everyone was allowed to
copy and improve them.

In a document discussing the subject, he notes that the trademark and
copyright laws were established to encourage, rather than discourage, the
sharing of information among competitors.

Ironically, the Lotus victory might have helped the LPF grow in both
size and strength. Stallman said that 40 of the 130 LPF members joined in
the last month, quite possibly in response to the 1-2-3 lawsuit. He plans
to hold a rally outside of Lotus on Aug. 2, to show that some software
developers and users disapprove of the copyright suits.

Stallman also worries that the patenting of algorithms and programs will
place on programmers will make software much more expensive, due to the
licensing fees which might be required by patent-holders. In his view "It
will become much harder to develop software after patents than it has
been," Stallman said, "because [software] is so much easier to start with."
Many software projects cost less than $50,000 to complete. Adding $1
million in copyright or patent royalties would hurt a $20 million hardware
project much less than a $50,000 software project, he said.

Free software for

all who want it

Several years ago, Stallman started the Free Software Foundation, which
he describes as a "charity for software development," to develop quality
programs which can be distributed free of charge. The FSF is currently
working on a free replacement for the popular Unix operating system, called
GNU (Gnu's Not Unix). The Emacs word processor, widely used throughout the
Institute, is the best-known piece of the GNU project.

Stallman warns that copyrights and patents could spell the end for free
software, since authors would have to pay royalties for programs which they
were giving away. "It will make development of proprietary software much
harder, and it will make development of free software effectively
impossible," he said.

He is still unsure of how to spend the fellowship money. "The
spirit of the thing is to do something that I would not have otherwise
done," he explained. He does have some ideas in mind. Among them are a trip
to the Soviet Union, a stereo system for the FSF office, and additional
support for people who work for free software.

According to The Boston Globe, Stallman supports himself by
working for two months a year as a $260-an-hour computer consultant. He
resigned from the AI Lab when he began work on the GNU project, so that MIT
would never be able to lay claim to a copyright on his work. Stallman says
that he has offered to pay rent for both his and the FSF office, but the AI
Lab has simply let him stay there. "I offered to [pay rent], but they said
it wasn't worth the effort of collecting it," he said.